Our unhealthy obsession with sickness

[Kire]

“Psychologists say that love sickness is a genuine disease and needs more awareness and diagnosis.”

Our unhealthy obsession with sickness
Why is being ill now embraced as a positive part of the human experience?
by Frank Furedi

We live in a world where illnesses are on the increase. The distinguishing feature of the twenty-first century is that health has become a dominant issue, both in our personal lives and in public life. It has become a highly politicised issue, too, and an increasingly important site of government intervention and policymaking. With every year that passes, we seem to spend more and more time and resources thinking about health and sickness. I think there are four possible reasons for this.

First, there is the imperative of medicalisation. When the concept of medicalisation was first formulated, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it referred to a far narrower range of phenomena than is the case today - and it was linked to the actions of a small number of professionals rather than having the all-pervasive character that it does now.

Essentially, the term medicalisation means that problems we encounter in everyday life are reinterpreted as medical ones. So problems that might traditionally have been defined as existential - that is, the problems of existence - have a medical label attached to them. Today, it is difficult to think of any kind of human experience that doesn't come with a health warning or some kind of medical explanation.

It is not only the experience of pain or distress or disappointment or engagement with adversity that is medicalised and seen as potentially traumatic and stress-inducing; even human characteristics are medicalised now. Consider shyness. It is quite normal to be shy; there are many circumstances where many of us feel shy and awkward. Yet shyness is now referred to as 'social phobia'. And, of course, when a medical label is attached to shyness, it is only a matter of time before a pharmaceutical company comes up with a 'shyness pill'. Pop these pills, and you too can become the life and soul of the party!

More: http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA958.htm

[REP]

1. I Keep Hoping For a Dx of Somatization, But I Feel Like Crap Cuz I'm Sick

I bet that most, if not all of us here would give our left nuts (figuratively speaking; I only have a left ovary to give) to just have this magical "medicalisation" disorder this writer meditates on. While I agree there are no more ill-behaved children, just those suffering ABC-XYZ syndrome and the shy are not shy but socially phobic ... people dealing with diabetes, MS, Crohn's, kidney failure, etc would much prefer a fashionable diagnosis than our dull deadly ones.

[blondeatlast]

4. "Dull, deadly ones." Precisely. You nailed it, REP.

FWIW, I know a true hypochondriac (a very close relaticve) who is far more obsessed with her imagined ailments than I am with my real ones. She doesn't go to support groups--she DEMONSTRATES her imagined asthma (and it is imagined) to everyone within range. In public. At every opportunity.

[Warpy]

5. I, too, wish my blood work was normal

and that all my lousy symptoms over the last 40+ years were figments of an overactive imagination.

They're not.

Just like I'm sick of skinny people blaming fat people for being fat and rich people blaming poor people for being poor, I'm sick to death of healthy people blaming sick people for being sick.

Actually, the best way to end all this "medicalization" of normal personality types is to end the drug war. Most people would do much better in life were they able to treat their own particular pain, whatever it consisted of.

It might even help us cope with the GOP in office.

Nah

[blondeatlast]

2. I'd love not be worry about my diabetes and anemia.

But if I stop caring--well, I DIE.

I know you like to spark debates, but this is supposed to be a fairly "safe" area for those of us who deal every day with crap like this.

I don't post my problems in the Lounge, ya know.

You don't have to come here, dammit.

Seriously, leave those of us who struggle every day to just get by alone, willya?

Just so we understand each other--there is nothing hypochondriacal about my diabetes, REPs kidney and other problems, and the other problems dealt with everyday by those of us who come here. There are plenty of indications that my pancreas/isle of Langerhans failed me long ago.

There's no polite way to say it--so I won't.

[REP]

6. Oops - Sorry, Didn't Realize I'd This Was a Trap

Though I had noticed another post fro the OP about "stories of inspiration" (one of my goals is to not be an 'inspiration') I didn't realize there was a pattern of afflicting the well, afflicted. I assumed this was the garden-variety misinformed ill-advised 'think happy thoughts' advice that the healthy sometimes give the chronically ill, as though we all sit around all day gazing at our navels, grasping for reasons to be unhappy and unwell.

[blondeatlast]

3. Let me repeat for emphasis--I don't go to the Lounge to discuss my issues.

I very rarely discuss my medical issues in any public forum where there is no assumption that it is an issue.

If someone offers my cheesecake, yes, I tell them I take insulin and refrain. That's it.

God help me, I wish I could be as healthy and wonderful and cheerful and perfect as the author (yes, I read the whole piece). But this group isn't a dinner party; it's more like a bar filled with like-minded types.

Although it might be interesting to post the controversy in the Lounge--is it okay for DU to have this group? If not, why not?

[DemBones DemBones]

7. I hate shit like this. It's one of the many bad things about

having chronic diseases -- feeling that you should be polite to people who most impolitely suggest that you just need vitamins, or to quit taking all your medications, or to get outside more often. (The last one is particularly ironic in my case since exposure to sunlight is known to cause flares in those of us who have lupus.)

It is rather an existential problem to be allergic to one's own DNA (as I and other lupies are), but that doesn't mean lupus is a "medicalized" (i.e. imaginary) problem.